


Let me be happy

by praycambrian



Series: In another time [2]
Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Photographs, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24185830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/praycambrian/pseuds/praycambrian
Summary: Boyd couldn’t read his face, squinting into the sunshine as he was. For a moment everything glittered in the air, too immense and close for words.Five pictures Boyd didn’t take and one he did.
Relationships: Boyd Crowder/Raylan Givens
Series: In another time [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745533
Comments: 12
Kudos: 61





	1. 16

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a coda to “[Rise and move again.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22567312)” While this should make sense if you haven’t read the other, I’d recommend reading them together. Just know this story takes place in an AU where Raylan and Boyd were together until each was led to believe the other had died. 
> 
> Title from Hiss Golden Messenger’s “[Red Rose Nantahala.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWdadJ0bnmQ)”

Boyd glanced up from the book and saw Raylan’s eyes were closed. 

“You’re a fucking lightweight, man, did two hits really knock you out?”

Raylan flipped him off, lazily. “Ain’t asleep.”

“Are you even listening?” 

_“If I lie here long enough, the water will eat away my flesh until the bones show like coral. And then the water can build on my skeleton, green things, deep water things.”_ Raylan’s feet drifted idly in the creek, his eyelids still shut as firmly as if the thick gold sunlight had sealed them with wax. “What else am I going to do except listen to you, Boyd? Ain’t like you ever shut up.” 

Something about what he said, or the way he said it, turned over in Boyd’s gut: a dark tadpole-flexing. 

“No call to be an ass about it,” he said mildly.

Raylan hummed, smiled. “Keep reading.”

Boyd obeyed. When he finished he set the book aside instead of picking another story. He tore up a handful of grass, splitting each blade with a fingernail in long careful strips and dropping them in the water.

“It’s all bullshit, you know. Ain’t no canals on Mars. Ain’t nothing going to grow there. And the air’s all carbon dioxide, you can’t just walk around breathing it like that. And you know how long it takes to get there? A hundred fifty days at least. They ain’t sending no daily morning rocket, I can guarantee you that.”

Raylan cracked one eye to squint over at him. “If it’s bullshit how come you like it so much?” 

Boyd shrugged. “Just cause it’s bullshit don’t mean it ain’t true.” 

“Mm.” Raylan considered this. “I suppose that makes sense.” 

Raylan had long since ditched his shirt. His arms were far browner than his skinny chest. There weren’t any new bruises; Boyd was keeping track. Boyd wanted to tease him about the stark tan lines on his neck and biceps from the t-shirts he wore cutting tobacco, even though Boyd had them too. Boyd wanted to know if it was the dope or the sunshine or something else that was making him smile like that. 

Boyd wanted to say something true about the canals on Mars: the metallic light, the bodies stretching inside the deep clear water, the dark sweet change taking root within. He wanted more. Tracing his fingers through the sweat dewing Raylan’s golden skin. Learning how soft were his eyelids. And inside that wanting, a seed uncurling: a truth he’d have to wait to name until it unfolded into view at last. 

“Would you want to go to Mars, Boyd?” Raylan’s eyes were still closed. “For real, I mean. Knowing it ain’t like that story.”

Boyd rolled up his jeans and stepped into the creek’s cool water, goosebumps rising on his thighs. “Would you?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think hell itself ain’t too far if it gets me out of Harlan. What’s Mars compared to that?”

“But?”

“But starting over’s one thing. Turning into something I ain’t…” 

Smooth stones dug knuckle-like into the soles of Boyd’s feet. He shrugged, even though Raylan couldn’t see him.

“Everything’s change, Raylan. Who’s to say who you are but you?”

He looked over his shoulder expecting to see Raylan still sprawled out, listening, eyes closed. But he was propped up on one elbow looking back. 

Boyd couldn’t read his face, squinting into the sunshine as he was. For a moment everything glittered in the air, too immense and close for words. And then: the sunspots fading from his eyes. An image, pinhole-fine: Raylan Givens watching him back, half-disappeared by light. 

“What?” Boyd said.

“Nothing,” Raylan said. “Just you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boyd and Raylan are reading and quoting from (in slightly mangled form) the short story collection _A Medicine for Melancholy_ by Ray Bradbury, specifically the story “Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed.”


	2. 17

Boyd hadn’t been looking for him, but when Raylan appeared through the crowd with Louise Massie laughing on his arm, he felt something in his spine thunk into place all the same. 

“Hey, Raylan,” he said. The rides’ fluorescent lights were kaleidoscoping on their faces. “Hey Lou.” 

“Boyd Crowder!” Louise swung herself down onto the picnic table with the accidental grace of the somewhat buzzed. “What are you doing sitting here all by your lonesome?” 

Boyd grinned. “Just enjoying the view.”

Raylan leaned against the fence, nodded at the plastic cups sweating on the table. “What you got there, man?” 

“Oh, well, Mister Bowling was kind enough to give me a couple orange juliuses, for _free._ ” Boyd winked at Lou. “The vodka in them’s all me, though.”

She laughed again. Boyd understood why Raylan had picked her: it was always best, with him, to have someone else around to carry most of the good humor. 

“What’d you do to weasel free drinks out of that cantankerous old ass?” she said.

“Oh, he’s a friend of my daddy’s.”

Lou, whose pastor father no doubt put her track ribbons and honor roll certificates up on the mantel, accepted this without suspicion. “You going to share?”

“Sure, honey. How could I refuse such a pretty thing?” 

Lou flipped him off with one hand and swigged the spiked julius with the other. She didn’t see how Boyd’s eyes had cut over to Raylan when he said it. 

“Oh, there’s Macy, she just got engaged, I got to go say hello!” She swayed to her feet, turning halfway through to point her finger. “I’ll be right back. Don’t you boys go nowhere.”

“No, ma’am.” 

Lou wove off through the crowd. Behind them, the tilt-a-whirl clanked, picking up speed, kids shrieking in delight. Raylan sat down next to him.

“She’s cute,” Boyd said quietly.

Raylan scrubbed a hand through his hair. “What are you really doing here, Boyd?” 

“Daddy’s doing business. He likes to be seen. Especially here, where people got to keep their happy faces on even when he strolls by to ask them why their payment’s overdue.” Boyd shrugged. “I’m meant to be keeping an eye on Bowman, but that boy ran off soon as he got his strip of free tickets, so, here I am. Enjoying the view.” 

It was dark and no one was paying attention to them, but Raylan turned away from Boyd’s gaze just the same. 

Boyd said, “Ain’t seen you in a couple weeks.” 

Raylan pretended to be engrossed in watching twelve-year-olds fail to pop balloons with darts. Boyd’s skin suddenly fizzed with anger. He was so angry he felt his teeth buzzing.

“You going to think about me when you get to the top of the Ferris wheel? When you win her a prize and she gives you a kiss? She a good kisser, Raylan? She know how to make you come?” He licked his lips: sugar, vodka, sweat. “Can she make you smile?” 

“Jesus _Christ_ , Boyd.” 

“I could get killed for this too, asshole. If it ain’t worth it to you, fine. But at least have the balls to figure out what the hell it is you want.”

“I want you to leave me alone.” 

“Bullshit. You want to be _safe_. Too late for that, son.”

Raylan slumped at that, like the lights still dizzying his face had swept away and taken his steel with them. He kept staring into the crowd. Then he said, “It was too late for us the day we were born.” And he squared his shoulders and met Boyd’s eyes and picked up the orange julius, not the one Lou had been drinking from but the one Boyd had: picked it up smooth and cool and took a long, sweet sip. 

Boyd’s breath fluttered in him like a curtain. “Boy, you better mean that.”

“I want you,” Raylan said. “Always. Even when I don’t.”

He meant it. It was plain as night on his face, so plain Boyd had to tear his gaze away. He felt porous, the damp breeze going right through his skin, blowing his anger apart like smoke. 

“You’re an asshole,” Boyd said, voice wavering. Clumsy: he’d never forgiven anyone before.

“I know,” Raylan said gently. 

Lou leaned out of a throng of teenagers, hand in hand with her friend, waving at Raylan. Raylan nudged Boyd’s knee as he rose to follow her. 

“I’ll see you,” he said. 

Boyd only nodded. His mouth was dry. 

Raylan glanced back over his shoulder once before he disappeared into the crowd. That was the moment: his back scalloped with shadow, orange light sliding over his cheek. 

Boyd thought of Raylan going the rest of the night with that juice still sweet on his lips. An invisible kiss. Boyd’s touch underneath any and every other.


	3. 18

Boyd waited as long as he could, until the sunrise suffused the truck like the inside of some gemstone, thin frost on the windows glowing. Then he woke Raylan with a hand on his belly and a kiss behind his ear. 

Raylan groaned in his throat like an old dog. “Come on, man.”

“That is the idea.”

“Too early. Too cold.”

“Mhmm.” Boyd slid his other hand beneath Raylan’s shirt. “This ain’t too cold, now, is it.”

Boyd was persuasive. Raylan was easily persuaded. Afterwards Boyd tucked his head under Raylan’s chin and listened to his heart coming down, felt his arms getting heavy around him. 

“Don’t you fall asleep again. We’re already getting a late start.”

Raylan made a disgusted noise. “Better get off me, then.”

“All right,” Boyd said, but first he propped himself on one elbow and cupped Raylan’s jaw: stroked his lips and the side of his nose, thumbed moth-delicate over his black eye. 

“Knock it off,” Raylan said. 

“I ain’t hurt you.”

“So don’t make me hurt you.”

Anybody else Boyd would have answered, _as if you could._ With Raylan he didn’t bother. There was no doubt. That boy was up in him certain as grit pearling in an oyster, closer than nerves, so close sometimes it seemed like any movement could wound. 

It started raining when they set off. A light patter perfect for hunting: their scent and sound hidden inside it like trout in the brown belly of a stream. Their breath steamed. Boyd only ever stalked deer with Raylan, since Bowman didn’t have the patience for it. Raylan could do it all day: listening, gaze intent, stepping maybe once a minute, those long legs sliding shadow-smooth over the earth. He was beautiful as all hell. Watching him filled Boyd with a kind of clear calm, like resin poured inside his bones. 

After a while they came to a powerline right-of-way cut halfway up the mountainside. The county had abandoned it years ago, some politician’s stalled soapbox effort to bring power to the hills, and the naked poles left waiting for powerlines that never came were now draped thick with creeper and kudzu. All the grasses nearly chest-high, saplings here and there like gangly outfielders.

As if there hadn’t been six hours of silence in the middle of the conversation, Raylan said quietly, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Don’t recall asking you to.”

A couple tight breaths. Then: “He won’t stop crowing about it. Arlo.”

Boyd waited. 

“I didn’t tell him shit, but he knows how I feel about it, and he’s milking it for all he’s worth. _You’re as good as me at breaking knees, boy._ Hand to God, I’m one more word away from breaking his.”

“Raylan, that man don’t know a thing about you.” 

“He knows who I am when I ain’t with you. Hell, half the county was at that game. Everybody knows, now.”

Boyd stopped. “You’re always with me,” he said. “Even when you ain’t. Remember?”

Raylan stopped too. Then he turned and buried his face in Boyd’s neck, pressed his lips behind Boyd’s ear. The soft warm rill of his breath. Boyd’s whole body shivered, helpless. He hooked his free hand in the back of Raylan’s belt.

“I wanted him to start something.”

“Arlo?”

“Dickie. The shit he was saying—I wanted an excuse to swing at him.”

“You may have wanted an excuse, but you didn’t make him give you one. He was aiming to blind you, baby. You didn’t do nothing nobody else wouldn’t have done in your place.”

A huff exhaled like a ghost slipping down inside Boyd’s shirt. “Ain’t your baby.”

“How ain’t you?” 

Raylan’s jaw clenched. Boyd felt it. 

“Okay,” Boyd said softly. “Then what are you?”

Raylan looked at him, and something in his expression made Boyd shut his mouth on the words still rolling there, marble-like: _you ain’t your daddy. You couldn’t be if you tried._ By now he knew enough to know that just because those words were true on his tongue didn’t mean they were true everywhere—didn’t mean they wouldn’t land like stones if he let them fly. 

He put his hand gently on Raylan’s bruised face, and Raylan let him.

“I ain’t anything,” Raylan said. “I’m just me.”

An hour later Raylan spotted a buck half-hidden across the meadow, antlers jutting from the mist. Slow as honey, pausing at the animal’s every twitch, he raised his gun. Minutes dripping by. His eyes never leaving the deer’s. Boyd’s eyes never leaving him. 

It struck Boyd that he wanted that picture as badly as he’d ever wanted anything. As if he could always have it, as if there was nothing else outside it, as if a square of film in his hands could finally show Raylan how Boyd saw him. How he deserved to be seen—bruised, upright, steady, taking the shot he knew was his.


	4. 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some mildly graphic description of harm to animals.

Boyd insisted they take his truck to Cumberland after work, since Raylan’s was one pothole away from coming apart on the road with its wheels spinning off into the woods like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. He acted it out with one hand on the wheel—fire, catastrophe—until Raylan swatted him. Boyd tugged him in for a kiss. 

“You don’t care whose truck we drive, you just want to take advantage of me,” Raylan said, mock indignant.

“You caught me. Guilty as charged.” 

At the bar they ran into a few people they’d gone to high school with: Gene Powell and his girlfriend Letty Simms, and Jerome Alston, who’d been a year or two ahead. They got a couple pitchers of beer with their burgers and fries and they shot some pool and threw a few games of darts, though Gene demanded Raylan play on both teams because it wasn’t fair to have him on just one.

“God damn, dude,” Jerome said, peering elaborately into Raylan’s ear. “You a robot or something?”

Raylan shrugged, threw another bullseye, and winked at Letty. “Just naturally gifted, I suppose.”

Boyd scoffed. “Don’t listen to one word of that. He’s got a board set up on the back of his door and he practices every damn day just for the chance to show off like this.”

“Way to blow my cover, man.”

It was good. Easy. Some days it was more needing than wanting for them both. When a man had just been hauled out of the belly of the earth, the dust and smell still stuck in all his small creases like flour in an old cutting board, there was nothing better by way of consolation than drinking cheap beer with sort-of friends while they bitched about the music.

Well. Boyd watched Raylan lean over the pool table. There were maybe one or two things better.

They were walking back to the truck around one, Raylan finally drunk enough to hold onto him in public, when Boyd heard a thin animal noise from the weeds at the edge of the parking lot. 

Being the more sober, it fell to him to investigate. He flicked his lighter. A small glow: dirty fur, one wet eye, a tail beating in slow anxious placation. She couldn’t have been more than a year old. 

“Come on, honey,” Boyd crooned, crouching with his hand out. 

“Boyd,” Raylan said. Boyd ignored him. 

“I ain’t gonna hurt you. Come on now, sweetheart.”

It took six minutes to coax her out onto the blacktop. She was limping badly, bleeding around the neck, and she stank. She put her nose on Boyd’s palm, tentatively, and then left it there, as if even trust was too exhausting.

“Grab me that towel out of the backseat, would you?” Boyd said. 

Raylan hesitated. Then he handed it over, sliding down the side of the truck to sit next to Boyd with his hands on his ankles. Boyd wrapped the dog gently. 

“Help me up.” 

“Boyd—”

“You got a problem, Raylan?” 

Raylan was tilting his head back against the dewy metal like he had a hard time holding it up. 

“It’s gonna break your heart, baby,” he said softly. 

“She ain’t that far gone.” 

“Drowning would be kinder.” 

“Yeah, well.” A black mood was rearing up in Boyd, snakelike like it did sometimes when he was drunk. “I ain’t aiming for kindness. Shut up and help.” 

Raylan had to drive them home, because Boyd couldn’t move the dog out of his arms without her crying: frayed helpless wails that sounded more like an ancient hinge or a ghost than an animal. She didn’t flinch at all, she was that weak. Raylan took the curves slow. Careful in a way he never was sober and rarely was drunk. 

They slid her into the bathtub and started up the water. Warm but not too warm. Soap lathered up in Boyd’s hands, not direct on her skin. She was small for a yellow dog, but—

“Those are the biggest tits I have ever seen on a dog,” Raylan observed, sprawling next to the tub. He rolled his forehead against the cool porcelain. “That dog has bigger tits than Dolly Parton.” 

Boyd still felt like hissing. “Go get me the peroxide and a rag.”

Raylan handed them over wordlessly. 

It was difficult work. She was torn up all over, so mangled Boyd couldn’t tell: chains? Fangs? Getting dragged on gravel? Her chest rose and fell. 

He thought Raylan had fallen asleep, but when he went to the other room for more rags he came back to find Raylan curled half-naked in the tub with the dog, soaked to his skin. Raylan held her steady while Boyd sponged dirt and pus out of the wound around her neck. 

“Had a dog once, for a little while,” Raylan said into the quiet. 

Boyd soothed one hand over the yellow dog’s ears. He figured he could guess the shape of that story. 

“Then ain’t now,” Boyd said. 

“I know that. I ain’t saying—” 

He broke off. The night laid thick over both of them. Boyd turned off the water and watched the last of it swirl away, nearly black with dirt between Raylan’s pale feet. The dog was trembling as they patted her dry. Raylan cradled her up in a clean towel. 

“I’m just saying we have to be careful,” Raylan said quietly. “Do you understand that?”

Boyd spanned the back of Raylan’s neck with one hand. Rubbed one thumb at that spot under his ear. His anger had drained out of him: a thin bitterness left behind like limescale.

“Careful don’t mean empty,” Boyd said. “Do  _ you _ understand that?” 

Raylan closed his eyes. Then he tipped his head back against Boyd’s hand. They were a sight, Boyd’s drunk sweethearted man crammed in the tub with that ragged stray in his lap. But the Polaroid was in the other room, and the hour too late and lean for keeping.

Boyd kissed the crown of Raylan’s head. “Let’s go to bed,” he said.


	5. 20

Boyd, being the elder brother, felt it his duty to show up early and play host, though it turned out he needn’t have bothered: their Aunt Martha had taken charge with the weary efficiency of a veteran general, having thrown engagement parties for each of Johnny’s older sisters and being chair of the annual church bazaar besides. Boyd mostly ended up running back and forth from the cellar fridge to the backyard to keep the coolers stocked with booze. 

By the time he could sit down, Raylan was already deep in conference with the whiffle ball players. Crowders versus Randolphs, the kids pinch-running for the older folks. 

Boyd whistled, the two-tone one he used to get people’s attention at a job site. Raylan looked up. Boyd held up a beer. Raylan grinned ruefully, gesturing at the bat in his hand, and Boyd laughed. 

“If he ain’t gonna drink that, I will,” Ava said, plucking the bottle from Boyd's hands as she sat, fanning herself. “Sweet Jesus it is hot out here.”

Boyd chuckled and took a long, thirsty sip of his own drink. “Real fine shindig you cooked up here, honey. Ought to be proud.”

“Oh, that’s all Aunt Martha,” Ava said dryly.

“Tyrant, ain’t she.”

“Good Lord, I fixed a batch of biscuits weren’t each exactly the same size, and the way she looked at me, you’d have thought I spat on her granny’s grave.”

“She only gave you a mean look and not the sharp side of her tongue? Damn, she must like you. You’re lucky, girl, that woman has had it out for me since I was ten years old.”

“With good reason.” Ava grinned. “Don’t think I ain’t heard  _ that _ story, Boyd Crowder.” 

“God help me,” Boyd said. “What kind of sister-in-law are you going to be if you already know all my secrets?” 

A crack went up from the field, whooping and clapping: a home run. One of the kids was sprinting round the makeshift bases, beaming, as Raylan stood on the mound and waved for the throw from the outfield. Too late. Runner home. Raylan scowled theatrically, but even from here they could see the smile underneath. 

“I’m glad y’all came,” Ava said. 

Boyd pulled his gaze away from the game. Ava gave him a look like a crumpled-up paper that had been smoothed flat again, shy and sorry and relieved, and then she looked away. Her engagement ring gleamed on her finger. 

“It’s a hell of a thing, promising to marry someone,” Boyd said. “You deserve to have your people around you celebrating.”

“Boyd,” she said quietly, but he shook his head. 

“Congratulations, honey,” he said. “I’m happy for you.”

The women laid everything out on the folding tables under the oaks: fried chicken and hamburgers, casseroles and greens and pies and Ava’s imperfect biscuits. Her uncle led a toast. Warm applause. Bowman kissing Ava’s cheek as she blushed and laughed. Boyd took a Polaroid of them like that, the crowd smiling around them, and pulled his little brother into a hug.

“Look at you, big man,” Boyd said, smirking. 

Bowman gave him a friendly shove. “Bigger than you.”

“That’s a fine woman there, Bowman. Finer than fine. Better treat her right.” 

“You sound like daddy.” 

When a river’s deep enough, you can’t tell from the surface if something’s given way in the current beneath it. Boyd said, “You went to see him?” 

“Last Saturday. Says he’s up for parole in November. Good chance he’ll be out in time for the wedding.” 

Bowman was perfectly at home in their aunt’s backyard, tall and solid and certain. It had been a long, long time since Boyd had been able to end a fight with him by dint of being stronger; now he’d have to fight dirty. For one blistering second Boyd felt like hitting him just to end it already. Then he felt like grabbing hold of him so tight no hurt could ever go in or out of him, Boyd’s grip like a seal. A second later it was gone. Swept downstream. Boyd swallowed and smiled and nudged Bowman’s shoulder. 

“I hope so,” Boyd said. “Can’t get married without your daddy there, can you.”

The food was good, and there was plenty of it. Raylan brought Boyd a plate. They ate in companionable silence, watching the kids run around, sugar-wild, deep in some arcane game now the whiffle ball was over. 

Dusk was coming on. Small black wings blurred across the purpling sky: a bat or a nighthawk. When Boyd got to his feet and walked off into the woods, Raylan waited a couple minutes before following. 

“What is it?” he said softly. 

Boyd shrugged, reaching for his hand. “Nothing. Just tired of eyes, that’s all. Feels like needles, not touching you when you’re looking this good.”

“You must live in agony, then, cause I always look good.” 

Boyd smiled and kissed his palm: sweat, beer, a clinging dense spice. “Why do you smell like black walnuts?” 

“There were a bunch laying around where we were playing. Had to throw them away so nobody broke an ankle.”

“Wish I could see you play for real again.”

“Maybe I’ll join a league, wherever we end up.”

Boyd hummed. Off near the house, someone had broken out a fiddle and guitar. It was getting darker, a hazy blue dark forming slow and liquid like an image in a Polaroid. Boyd could still make out Raylan’s face as he idly caught a lightning bug in his cupped hand. They watched it travel his skin, antennae twitching, pausing at the silver horseshoe. Maybe it was the first wedding band that bug had ever seen. Its wings opened and it flew away. 

Raylan tapped Boyd’s temple with his newly liberated hand.

“What’s going on in there?” he murmured.

The thought that had been stirring all evening rose up in Boyd’s head, as if that lightning bug had towed it on a string into the light. 

“Sometimes,” he said, “I wish every person on earth would just disappear so I could finally say something true.”

Raylan regarded him. “Do you really?”

“Sometimes.” Boyd shrugged. “No. I guess I just wish we could stay.” 

Raylan frowned. Boyd smoothed a thumb over the furrow in his brow. “I know. I know we can’t. I just wish there was anywhere in the world we could’ve had all this.” He tipped his head: the house bright as a music box through the trees. “I just wish it could’ve been here.”

“Wish in one hand, piss in the other,” Raylan said.

“I know.” 

“I’m sorry. I just mean—”

“I know.”

The quiet gathered for a moment. Raylan tugged on their joined hands. 

“Hey. Look at me.”

Boyd did. His beautiful face, his whole body: the soft living thing that kept Boyd’s love alive in the world. Boyd wanted to take a picture. He wanted to pin his husband to the evening like a lightning bug and look forever.

Raylan framed Boyd’s face in his hands and kissed him. 

“This is a good night,” Raylan whispered. “Let it be. Okay?”


	6. 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter (obliquely) mentions terminal illness and domestic abuse.

Boyd was the one who went to church, so he was the one who agreed to Easter dinner at the Givens house when Frances cornered him after service one morning. 

“You could’ve said no,” Raylan grumbled. The sheets pooled around him where he lay sprawled, half-dozing in the sun. He’d barely dragged himself out of bed by the time Boyd got home, and he’d wasted no time dragging them both back into it. 

“What if I didn’t want to say no?” Boyd said reasonably. “I like your mama, a damn sight better than I like you sometimes. She ain’t so moody, _and_ she cooks better.”

Raylan flipped him off without looking up. Dolly, evidently grown tired of watching the birds from the front window, trotted into the bedroom and stuck her wet nose in bed to make sure they weren’t hiding any toys from her. Raylan cast about for an antler and tossed it to her. She curled up to gnaw on it, her world in perfect order.

“Arlo’s still up county for ninety days,” Boyd said. “Won’t have to deal with him. Just you, me, your mama, your Aunt Helen.”

Raylan grunted, pulled himself up on one elbow. “What do I care about Jesus rising from the tomb?” he said. “You and me did that already, once a day five days a week for thirteen months. And we didn’t even have to die first. Where’s _our_ holiday?”

Boyd laughed, as he’d been meant to. “I’d say something about you quitting your blaspheming, except I also seem to recall a line about the first stone being cast by he who is without sin.”

“And that sure as shit ain’t anyone in this house.”

“Maybe Dolly.”

“That’s right.” Raylan was stretching, his bare chest golden, not a bruise in sight Boyd hadn’t put there with his own mouth. He caught Boyd watching and grinned, wicked, sweet. “You know, for all that Bible talk, you didn’t have a lick of trouble forgetting all the lines about not lying down with men, now did you.”

“I know when God’s speaking and when he ain’t.” 

“Mmhm.”

Raylan’s hand was on his hip, moving. Boyd grasped it, brought it up to his mouth. 

“This might be the last time, baby,” he said softly. 

Raylan rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling. Boyd examined Raylan’s hand with both of his own. Veins, small scars. A black bruise under his thumbnail inching away from the cuticle slow and certain as a pebble in a glacier. 

“I ain’t dressing up,” Raylan said finally. 

“Is that so,” Boyd said.

Raylan dressed up. A clean blue button-down and a black suit jacket, which, by dint of being the only suit he owned, had also been his wedding suit. Boyd sat at Frances’s table and said _amen_ to grace and ate her fried chicken and potatoes and gravy and biscuits and deviled eggs with the attention such a spread deserved, and he didn’t stare at his fine, smiling husband, because he was the best damn liar in Harlan County. 

Helen paid enough attention to Raylan’s clothes for the both of them. 

“The two of you standing there on the porch like a couple of carpetbaggers.” She snorted. “Thought you were going to try to sell me a Bible.”

“Don’t teach me how to act a proper guest and then come over all surprised when I listen,” Raylan said mildly.

“So you’ll listen when I tell you to comb your goddamn hair, but not when I tell you to get your ass out of Harlan County?” 

Boyd set his knife down quietly, pressing his knee against Raylan’s under the table. At the foot of the table, Frances did the same: the metal clinking against the plate as her hand trembled. 

“Speak however you like when you’re in your house, Helen, but in mine there’s no swearing at the dinner table,” Frances said. She turned to Raylan. “You ain’t a guest in this house, honey.”

“I know,” Raylan said. 

He was looking at the table. He could’ve been answering anyone. 

Boyd got Helen talking about county gossip: Hank Werth had been sleeping with a girl half his age, it turned out, and bought her a house, which his wife found out when he died of a heart attack and the mortgage came to light. Frances ate slowly. When they’d finished, Raylan rose without protest to see to the dishes, nudging a kiss into his mother’s thin hair. 

“Boyd, come on out to the garden with me,” Frances said. “I’m going to give you boys some vegetables to take home.”

“Mama—” Raylan started.

“Oh hush, was I talking to you, baby? You’d survive on beer and canned beans if we let you. I’m counting on Boyd to have a bit of sense.” 

“I can’t win for losing today,” Raylan said, put upon. “You think I don’t do half the cooking in that damn—in that house? And you, quit laughing,” he said to Boyd, flicking dishwater at him. “Traitor.”

It had been a good spring: vegetables and flowers swaying up from their neat raised beds, young sunflowers leaning against the chicken wire fence with their faces still closed in spiky green fists. Boyd helped Frances down into the chair Helen had left there for her when things started getting worse. He gathered greens under her direction: chard, beets, radishes, leeks. The warm heavy smell of dirt. 

“Reckon that’ll do it?” Frances said. 

Boyd considered the full basket, then glanced over his shoulder at the house. “I’d give it a few more minutes,” he said wryly. “They’ve been like dogs at a bone for months now. Best to let them hash it out, give the rest of us a moment’s peace.”

“Sharp as they come, ain’t you,” Frances said. 

“I like to think so.”

“Humble, too.” In her lap she folded and unfolded a handkerchief, its edges stitched with flowers. “He’s staying for me, ain’t he.”

Boyd brushed dirt from a clutch of spring onions, weighing his words in his palm. 

“If anything happens,” Boyd said at last, “he don’t want to hear about it over the phone from somewhere else.” 

“He’s going to hear it over the phone either way.” 

“I know what it’s like for someone to tell you how it happened, because you weren’t there. I won’t ask that of him.”

Frances smoothed the handkerchief with her trembling hands. Her own parents were unknown to Boyd, whether they loomed bright or cool in her memory; he only knew they’d been hill people. 

“Cut me some of those too, honey,” Frances said, pointing to another corner of the garden. “I want them for the table.” 

Obediently, Boyd took up the shears: long supple stems topped with a clutch of white flowers creased like a fine dress.

“Pretty, ain’t they,” Frances said, seeing his interest. 

“Yes, they are pretty,” Boyd said. “What are they called?” 

“Resurrection lily.”

Boyd laughed. “Auspicious, then.” 

“Some also call them naked ladies.” 

“Even more auspicious.”

Frances smiled. “Takes a certain kind of man to call flowers pretty.” 

Boyd put aside the shears to settle the flowers in Frances’s arms. “I ain’t one to say a true thing ain’t true.” 

“That’s exactly what you are, boy.” 

Her voice hadn’t changed: clean, worn china-fine with illness. He looked up, wrongfooted. She was studying the cuttings in her lap. 

“You think I’m a liar?” he said quietly. 

“I’m glad of it,” she said. “You’ll need it. Out there in the world less than here, I hope and pray. But you’ll need it nonetheless. To keep my boy safe from what you are to him.” 

Boyd felt his own face pale. He had to try a few times to force words through his bone-dry throat.

“How long you known?” 

“A while,” she said, still in that same voice. “Didn’t have cause to say a word till now.” 

“It ain’t sin.” Boyd’s hand ached on the shears. “It ain’t some rope God gave us to hang ourselves with. Miss Frances, I swear, he—”

“Hush,” she said. Mild, inexorable, as if he were her own son. “Any sin’s between you and God. Ain’t my concern. All I want is to keep my boy from that judgment as long as may be.” 

Something gave a little dry click in his throat like a door latching. Usually he thought himself brave, tougher than most. But he couldn’t look at her just then. Carefully, he took her hands in his: her skin thin and loose, wrinkling like an overripe peach. Her wedding band nudged up next to his own. He’d already made this promise, though he supposed she had a right to hear it. 

“I’ll keep him safe, Miss Frances,” Boyd promised softly.

Frances nodded. She smoothed her thumbs against Boyd’s and then withdrew. 

“You know, if I thought about leaving once, I must have thought it a thousand times,” Frances said. “I thought, _he hits me again and I’ll fly away. I’ll take my boy and we’ll never come back_. I’m smart. Used to be pretty. I could’ve gone anywhere.”

“But?”

“It felt like there were two kinds of missing pressing up on either side of me, like I was nothing but a pane of glass.” She looked off past the garden, up into the dark green of the hill. “On one side, all the things out there I’d never know if I stayed. On the other, everything here I’d miss right down to the marrow if I left. I thought I was choosing between them. Maybe I did.” She shook her head. “Don’t matter none now. You ain’t got that choice. You’re going, the two of you. Soon as you can.”

It rang in his chest: over and over, a glass echoing.

“All right, Miss Frances,” he whispered. 

“All right,” she said. “Help me up, now.” 

She leaned on him as they went back up to the house, her breath a little harsh with effort, the lilies cradled in her arm like a baby sleeping. Boyd knew they’d never talk about it again.

They drove home with the windows cranked down and the evening air rushed in, cool and thick. 

“What is it?” Raylan said. 

“Nothing, sweetheart,” Boyd said. “Just thinking.” 

They pulled up as the sun was setting: fiery, clouds glowing like a glass plate negative. It took Boyd a minute to remember to turn off the truck. 

“Go on,” Raylan said, half-smiling as he hefted the basket of greens. “I can put this away. Open a couple beers, shuffle a deck of cards. Just don’t be too long.” 

Boyd kissed him, drawing it out like a brushstroke, and grabbed the Polaroid. Dolly greeted Raylan in a flurry at the door, then bounded to give Boyd the same treatment before nosing happily past him into the field. 

The sky shone, made small and perfect in the viewfinder. But it was too late already. Even without taking it Boyd knew the picture would turn into nothing but a square of darkness, so he just stood and watched the clouds purple, let the fragrant night flow right through him. Loss staying, loss going, Frances said. Boyd turned the thought over in his head and couldn’t find a hole. 

“Come on, Doll.” He whistled. “Dolly, let’s go inside, come on.” 

Raylan had left the door open, soft yellow light spilling out into the dusk, and Boyd could see the man’s blue shadow moving through the window. A love pierced him so clearly he felt raw with it, helpless—just standing there in his Sunday best in the yard, as if neither past nor future could wound him at a touch. He wanted to throw himself into that instant: crawl into it and stay, warm as a moth within the panes of a window. But it was already passing. All he could do was raise the camera. 

“Get what you wanted?” Raylan asked as Boyd came inside, Dolly on his heels.

Boyd shook the negative and set it facedown to develop. Raylan would want it in the lockbox when he saw it: it was as much evidence of love as everything else. 

“Yeah,” Boyd said.

He stepped close, nesting his head in Raylan’s shoulder.

“What?” Raylan said.

“Nothing,” Boyd said. “Just you.”


End file.
